By now many of you have completed your first hike and have experienced the incredible views and diversity of wildflowers. How stunning! You also may have many gorgeous photos of flowers that you want to share with everyone else involved in MeadoWatch. We have set up a Flickr Group that anyone can contribute to; you just need to join Flickr and join the group which can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/meadowatch/. Every photo is welcome here, from photos of the survey sites to animals to mountain views. For photos of specific species all across Mt. Rainier National Park, we would love your photos added to iNaturalist. The iNaturalist platform allows us to download a file that we can easily extract scientific data from. You just need to have date-stamped, geotagged photos to upload to iNaturalist. The easiest way to add photos to iNaturalist is also through the Flickr group. First upload the photos to Flickr and then log into iNaturalist and join our MeadoWatch group (http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/meadowatch), click on the blue button that reads ‘Add Observations to this project’. You will see a tab called ‘Add photos’ Just select Flickr under the drop down Source menu. You will be prompted to link your Flickr account to your iNaturalist account so that both the photo and associated data can be uploaded to the MeadoWatch iNaturalist project. Select a photo from the window on the right and then click on ‘sync’ to synchronize the GPS coordinates, date and notes from Flickr. Be sure to add the phenological stage! Also, be sure to check the weather before you head out for your hike. I prefer using NOAA to weather.com because it is specific to Mt. Rainier. http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?textField1=46.7853457870&textField2=-121.7420573080#.Ug6zNH-gZeg The photos below are from the day after a hailstorm that Elli got caught in. Look at that erosion!You never know how quickly weather can change. It's always best to be prepared!